A Texas home that was occupied by an alleged "serial squatter" and her teenage son looked like the morning after a frat party when homeowners reclaimed the property, photos show.
"They smelled urine. They smelled smoke," homeowner Jessica Davis told Fox News Digital of what her husband and police found when they entered the home in Rowlett, Texas, Sept. 27. "Both of the toilets are clogged with mounds of toilet paper and other seemingly fluids."
Davis said she’s relieved the squatter and her son are officially gone, but she and her family are looking at thousands of dollars in expenses to clean the home of garbage and rotten food and restore wooden cabinets at the home’s bar that the squatter allegedly covered with paint primer.
Davis and her husband, Colin Davis, purchased their first home in December in Rowlett, roughly 20 miles outside of Dallas. The home, which has four bedrooms, a pool and a hot tub, was a dream for the family before Davis had to relocate to Florida for her job about six months ago.
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The couple did not want to sell the property so soon after purchasing it and decided to rent it out for a couple of years, Davis told Fox News Digital in a previous interview last month. They posted listings on Apartments.com and Zillow to find prospective tenants and wound up in a nightmare scenario with a tenant who allegedly used a false identity to move into the home.
Davis said she received an initial message from a hopeful tenant about the property, which came in under the name "Heather Schwab," but the woman told Davis that she was using her friend’s Zillow account and claimed her actual name was Rayes Ruybal.
A Zillow spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital that the company "strives to provide a safe online platform for renters and landlords, including connecting landlords with third-party providers who can help them thoroughly vet rental applications using credit and background checks as well as eviction histories.
"We prohibit any user from impersonating another person or operating under false pretenses; we take such behavior seriously and do not tolerate it on our platform," the spokesperson added.
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Everything appeared above board with the application, and Davis allowed the woman and her 17-year-old son, who Davis said has autism, move into the home early as payments for the house were processing. But then the payments failed "left and right," according to Davis, and the homeowners never received money from the woman.
Suspicions piqued, Davis began her own sleuthing on the woman after police repeatedly told her it was a civil matter, Davis said.
She began investigating the name "Rayes Ruybal" on various background check sites and could only find the name being associated with a 72-year-old man. She also investigated phone numbers she used to contact the woman and stumbled upon how a woman named Heather Schwab was related to Rayes Ruybal. The homeowner claimed Ruybal is Schwab’s father.
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Davis then investigated the name Heather Schwab and discovered news links from 2018 reporting on her arrest and subsequent conviction on felony identity theft charges from alleged serial squatting in Adams County, Colorado. She and her husband William Schwab were accused of renting and living on properties but never paying landlords.
Schwab was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 for pulling a scam on two landlords in Adams County but was released in 2020 after serving only 16 months behind bars, CBS News reported. She and her husband used aliases during the previous squatting incidents, including "Jenkins," "Rayes" and "Ruybal," news reports from 2018 show.
Prosecutors dubbed Schwab a "serial squatter," while the judge who presided over her case in 2018 said her crimes were "appalling."
Davis and her husband hired a lawyer after the discovery and began filing eviction notices to no avail. Local media began investigating the matter last month, which Davis attributed to helping speed along the process of getting the squatter and her son out of the house.
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Davis notified police Sept. 27 that her husband was going to check in on the home, and he waited for police to meet him at the address in case Schwab was still there and they could make an arrest. Instead, the house was empty except for trash, empty bottles of beer, clogged toilets and food, photos provided to Fox News Digital show.
Davis said the city had previously shut off the water to the home after noticing a discrepancy with Schwab’s name on the utility account. She believes the squatters were refilling the toilet bowls with water from the hot tub, Davis told Fox, noting the hot tub was depleted of water.
"The pool is also pretty low now, so they were using that water. There is rotten food everywhere," Davis said, adding some clothes such as socks and underwear were also left in the home. "She brought in a cat when she wasn't supposed to."
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The alleged squatter and her 17-year-old son did take an Xbox, TV and inflatable mattresses that Davis’ husband saw in the home before they moved out.
Davis said her husband noticed a heavy smell of cigarette smoke in the house and soiled rugs.
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"We're actually really scared to flush the toilets. … We can't even have someone come in and professionally clean because we would have to get those hazmat cleaners because of all of the feces and urine," Davis said.
The homeowner says she’s now looking at a stack of bills that need to get paid in addition to finding new tenants or selling the home. The property was supposed to generate $2,850 in rent each month, in addition to a $300 monthly bill for weekly pool services. Instead, Davis did not receive any payments from the woman for the three months she’s owed and is looking at a $1,500 water bill, electric bills, legal fees, mortgage payments and cleaning fees.
"We are probably looking close to maybe $10,000 on getting" the house cleaned and in shape for someone else to rent, Davis said.
Davis said she believes Schwab and her son are still in Texas, explaining that she believes Schwab has family ties in the state.
Davis said she is hopeful Schwab will be arrested and has considered suing her in small claims court for the money owed. However, the homeowner said she can’t afford to take Schwab to court and has even set up a GoFundMe page to help with current expenses.
She lamented city leaders appeared to lack interest in her case earlier this year until the media reported on the matter last month.
"It was a brick wall. If the news media didn't contact the City of Rowlett to tell them, ‘Hey, you need to look at this house,' I feel like the cops still would have ignored it," she said, adding she believes the squatter using a false identity on the city water bill also flagged authorities to act quickly.
Davis is calling for reforms for "squatter rights" laws so police can respond quickly and not argue such a matter is a "civil" dispute.
"Squatters should not have rights. Anybody who goes into a house illegally or does not pay rent purposely, they should have no rights," Davis told Fox News Digital.
A spokesperson for the Rowlett Police Department said Tuesday it "appears that she has vacated the property. The criminal investigation is still open and ongoing."
Fox News Digital previously reached out to a number that Davis said she used to contact Schwab, but the woman who answered denied being Schwab or knowing anyone by that name.
